


Fail Again. Fail Better.

by Kieron_ODuibhir



Series: Cirque de Triomphe [26]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Birthday Cake, Earth-3, Fluff, Gen, Team Mom is not perfect, Team as Family, boomph, plotless interlude, the Riddler in my head is five foot two
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-08
Updated: 2015-08-08
Packaged: 2018-04-08 22:06:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4322493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kieron_ODuibhir/pseuds/Kieron_ODuibhir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Enigma has been friends with the Jokester way too long, Crocodile is the most laid-back man in Gotham, Strawman is shy, and Harlequin is on her last nerve. Also, this smoke is remarkably purple.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fail Again. Fail Better.

**_Boomph!_ **

On a certain chilly midmorning in March, a ramshackle old brownstone in Gotham's East End shook with a muffled explosion, and brilliantly purple smoke began to spill from every crack and window, starting from the top down. A few seconds later, people began to spill after it, coughing and staggering and broadcasting various degrees of irritation.

"God _dammit_ , Jon!" exclaimed one of the smallest figures, tossing yellow hair and fanning smoke away from its face with both hands. "I don't mind a little healthy chaos, but if you're going to keep blowing up _someone's_ headquarters, why don't you go back to the drug dealers we sprung you from, and do it to them?"

"Harley!" remonstrated the man in the green bowler hat, who was about her size.

"Sorry," mumbled the rake-thin man who'd emerged last, hunching against cold or recrimination or both.

"All _I_ want to know," grumbled the largest of the lot, folding his great scaly arms and turning back to look at the purple-smoking building, "is are we gonna start hallucinating again?"

"Ah, not this time," said the thin man, fingers drumming nervously at nothing. "It's just—I thought you could use—like ninjas, you know?"

The man in the hat chuckled, leaned over and reached up to pat the nervous culprit on the back. "Oh, J will _love_ him some smoke bombs. Especially if they match his hair. You're fine, Jon. Just keep doing your best." He shot a fierce look at the blonde woman, who bit her lip, contrite.

"Sorry," she said. "You made Ella's birthday cake fall, is all. Ed's right, we'd never send you back, don't worry. Let's just…find you some lab space that isn't in the attic. Okay? I'm tired of explosions, and leaking purple smoke isn't exactly…subtle. This is supposed to be a safehouse."

The big man snorted, and when his friends looked at him questioningly, swung his tail in a wry circle to indicate the street, gutters rimmed in dirty half-melted snow but no doors opened but theirs, and no one in sight. "Neighbors are so used to us blowing stuff up, nobody even came out to look."

Even the thin man gave a narrow grin at that. "Sorry," he repeated, but he met their eyes this time, and the woman smiled at him.

"So, lab space," the little man asserted, hopping up onto the sidewalk again to squint through thinning lavender wreaths of haze, and flipping off his hat to fan at it. "You could share mine, but the computers really don't like smoke, and I foresee that being a pretty unresolvable conflict."

"Still time to start over and finish a new cake before clownlet gets home from school," the big scaly man rumbled to the blonde at the same time, as they made their way back toward the door. Overhead, a string of geese complained their way steadily, optimistically north. "And I'll eat the flat one."

"So very helpful of you, Waylon," she drawled. "What _ever_ would I do without you."

Waylon poked his long nose over the threshold and gave a cautious sniff. "Cake is a two-person job now?"

Harley shrugged. "You can eat the fallen one, if you'll clean out the pans and re-grease them while I'm mixing."

"Birthday cakes," the little man with the hat informed tall, twiggy Jon, as they followed the other two, "are serious business around here."

Jon said, "I always hated greasing pans." It sounded like _thanks._

"Tidy up the den for Ella's party, then," Harley called back, as she crossed the crooked doorsill. "I'm not going to have time."

The thin man sighed, and Ed slapped him on the back as they disappeared into the house.

They left the door open behind them, to let the rest of the smoke out, and the brisk wind followed them inside, smelling of city and sky: sharp, and dirty, and going on forever.

**Author's Note:**

> ...posting this having spent about seven and a half straight hours constructing the madness that is a _seven layer black forest cake_ at the request of my brother, who turned seventeen yesterday. (HowdidthishappenheisBABY. What.) It contained four kinds of cherries and needed internal cardboard struts, and looked like something out of Doctor Seuss only about fifty times chocolatey-er. Whew.
> 
> Ella Quinzel is having her fifth birthday. She gets a marbled sheetcake, white with amateurish purple icing flowers. Harley has to send Ed out to borrow three-quarters of a cup of sugar about fifteen minutes later.


End file.
